Hailed by Fast Company as "The Doctor of the Future", Dr. Parkinson is re-imagining the doctor/patient relationship, marrying a 21st century toolkit - think social networking, IM, video chat, SMS and PayPal - with old-fashioned, doctor-in-your-neighborhood, quality care. Pay a virtual visit to his Web 2.0 primary care practice, Hello Health, which offers a new way of keeping people well. See video

Fom Michelle Riggen-Ransom at the Pop!Tech blog:

PHOTO CREDIT: Kris Klug

Dr. Jay Parkinson is helping health care providers and their patients connect in new ways. Using a variety of new technology tools and platforms, Parkinson is flipping the idea of healthcare around, putting the power in the consumers’ hands and making healthcare more personalized.

We’ve written about Dr. Parkinson and his company Hello Health before. In today’s talk, he gave us a deeper dive into the reasons why he created his company and his innovative thinking on the future of health care.

He asked the audience: what is the fundamental reason that relationships fail? The answer of course is poor communication. This is equally true of marriages, friendships and — it turns out — health care.

Hello Health’s website says:

We love technology, the Internet, and especially our iPhones. You can talk to us like you’re talking to a friend: through emails, texts, phone calls, instant messages, or face-to-face conversations. Also, everything’s online, from making appointments to accessing your records.

Parkinson not only uses current technologies (his website, Google calendar, PayPal and iphone updates) to improve doctor/patient communication issues, but he’s also reinvented the payment model of the healthcare system, charging a $35 a month subscription fee in addition to flat rates for things like answering emails and video or IM chats. He states that 50% of office visits are unnecessary: he’d rather the patient spend less time and money by communicating about what the problem is and determining what the next steps are based on that initial (virtual) conversation.

True to 2.0 form, Parkinson’s also has both a personal website and a blog where one can read his further thoughts on how technology, politics and pop culture impact the kind of health care we’re getting.